Reading for Personal Development

This is the first book of a subseries included in Bibliotreatment. Reading is therapeutic, and many of the issues that may be worrying you have been broached by great writers whose insight sometimes makes you wonder whether you/ someone you know have been spied on to provide literary material. Despite a widespread belief to the contrary, reading is not a passive but an extThis is the first book of a subseries included in Bibliotreatment. Reading is therapeutic, and many of the issues that may be worrying you have been broached by great writers whose insight sometimes makes you wonder whether you/ someone you know have been spied on to provide literary material. Despite a widespread belief to the contrary, reading is not a passive but an extremely demanding interactive process. It "involves mental activity, is embedded in other communication abilities, and converts graphic stimuli into meaning." Moreover, fiction works pose very real challenges. You need to pierce through the level of the enunciated (the actual words used and their arrangement in sentences) to reach the level of enunciation (to put it simply, what lies behind the words; what the author conveys even when she is not aware of actually having meant what seems patent to you.) Between-the-lines reading is a fascinating exercise in detection, association, comparison, identification, debate, and much more. Active reading, the only way to really profit from books, is reflected in notes pencilled on the margins, highlighted phrases or passages, question and exclamation marks, crosses, and the like. Nothing can be more wrong than to think that a book is a "valuable," a "sacred" object that must be preserved intact. Books call for intervention, in the same way as some forms of contemporary visual art appropriate an object and make a new imprint on it, thus turning it into a unique object, for every intervention is exclusive and individual. The key, indeed, is appropriation. Your copy, your interaction with the story, your conclusions. Books have an ending, but are not truly finished until readers reinterpret and actualize them. Enjoy your trip along these pages. Marta Merajver-Kurlat is an Argentine author whose attraction to the ways in which mankind tells its own history encouraged her to undertake studies in myth, language, literature, psychology, and psychoanalysis. Accordingly, her novels Just Toss the Ashes, Los gloriosos sesenta y despues, and El tramo final delve into intriguing aspects of human nature. A lecturer in psychoanalytic associations of her country, she first took the challenge of addressing non-specialists in psychological issues in the self-help series entitled Bibliotreatment and released by Jorge Pinto Books Inc. In 2009-2010. Reading for Personal Development complements the series by recommending ten works of fiction of infinite value for the advancement of personal improvement....more

Community Reviews

The premise of this reflective little book is that reading provides much more than entertainment--books provide keys to some of the questions in our lives. A great book, one that stands the test of time, discusses issues "so profoundly human that we feel they inform the present." Merajver-Kurlat also says, "Books have an ending, but are not truly finished until readers reinterpret and actualize them."

I've chosen two of the ten books she interpreted in "Reading for Personal Development" to reintThe premise of this reflective little book is that reading provides much more than entertainment--books provide keys to some of the questions in our lives. A great book, one that stands the test of time, discusses issues "so profoundly human that we feel they inform the present." Merajver-Kurlat also says, "Books have an ending, but are not truly finished until readers reinterpret and actualize them."

I've chosen two of the ten books she interpreted in "Reading for Personal Development" to reinterpret for myself and to let other readers glimpse what Merajver-Kurlat's researched analyses offer us.

I chose is Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" primarily because some of us find the future more fascinating than the past, maybe because we think we can have a part in improving the future while the past...is past. Huxley warns us of a future under a totalitarian regime. Merajver-Kurlat adds to this prophecy the potential to become a casualty rather than a liberator if we "renounce individuality for the sake of safety amid the flock."

In my other choice, "The President" by Miguel Angel Asturias, Merajver-Kurlat asks us to bleed over this book to truly comprehend the nature of evil. For those of us who've never experienced life under a Latin American dictatorial government, the "unspeakable abominations" written about seem unreal. Yet those who've lived through these circumstances must be abler to place themselves in the roles of those who pretend nothing is wrong, or with those who must make themselves invisible to survive. Admitting to the horror would likely be a death warrant. Could it be that those of us who dare to read The President and similar books are the ones able to survive when we have the courage to demand an end to the horrors?

After finishing each chapter, I felt like I needed more of Merajver-Kurlat's astute insights into each book's meaning and application for my life--until I reviewed her purpose for writing: to teach me, the reader, to read between the lines. Once I accepted her challenge to reach my own conclusions, I knew I‘d found the keys to answering my questions—instead of the author's....more